Commodore Amiga 1000

Donor: Doug Walker
Location: Williamsburg, Virginia

My co-worker Doug blessed me with this Amiga 1000. This is the original model. One big difference between the 1000
and subsequent models was that the BIOS wasn't in ROM. Rather it was loaded off a " Kickstart" disk.
This added much flexibility to the system, as low level changes could be made. One notable example was the
"clicking external drive" problem. Amigas would continually check an extension drive to see if it yet contained
a disk. This would cause a clicking sound, which became annoying after awhile. There were third-party tools available
to prevent the click, but most Amiga users just made sure that there was always a disk in the second drive. However,
Amiga 1000 owners could just apply a patch to their Kickstart disk and avoid the whole problem.

Once the machine boots off of the Kickstart disk, it then needs a Workbench disk, that contains the OS. Unfortunately,
Doug didn't provide me with a Kickstart disk, so I can't get the box up and running. (Although, to be honest, I haven't
actually asked him if he still has the disk. I guess I ought to.)

Close-up of the back. The inclusion of stereo audio jacks plus composite video
help establish the Amiga's A/V potential.

Label on the underside. Note the "UL Pending" sticker. This one isn't UL
Approved! What are you trying to do to me Doug? Burn my house down! (Ha!)

Earlier Comments

Owner: Joey Ennis
Location: Smithfield, NC

I bought this Amiga several years ago from a
friend, and I still use it for games today, the
multitasking is great. In fact it was one of the very
first computers to offer real time multitasking. And the
memory was expandable to 8 megs. It could digitize
pictures, video, and even display pictures with more than
4000 colors in ham mode. Animation was a breeze, the
"Juggler" demo proved this.

Some Downfalls:

Commodore replaced this with the 500 (see
corrections)

Did not support High Density Disks (see
corrections)

Processor could not be upgraded. (see
corrections)

AMIGAOS could only be upgraded to 1.3.

Would not run AmiTCP, the PPP software for
AmigaOS (see corrections)

Only 16 colors in Workbench mode (Later fixed by
the A1200 with the AGA chip)

The Amiga was a great computer that never really got a
chance to live, although they are still being used and
supported today.

In recent years, many of the above problems have been
fixed. Thus, I have been inundated with loads of
corrections sent in over the last year. Here are a few:

The processor can be upgraded, initially to the
68010, then 68020 and 68030 cards were available,
such as Phoenix boards.

The OS can be updated to 3.1.

The Amiga 4000 first featured AGA, the Amiga 1200
was released later. AGA consists of several
chips, not 1.

VisCorp never bought Amiga, Gateway 2000 did.
VisCorp could afford the price when Escom went
bankrupt. Now there are 2 independent Amiga
subsidiaries under Gateway 2000: Amiga
International and Amiga, Inc. Gateway 2000 has
promised to bring new Amiga models to the market
this year or maybe in the beginning of 1999.

The 2000 replaced the 1000. The 500 was to
provide a low cost upgrade from the 64/128.

Re: High density disks, when the 1000 was
designed there were no HD floppies. You can using
current OS.

PPP runs just fine on a 1000 with new kickstart
ROM and 2.0 OS.

The A1000 has the interesting feature of the
signatures of the creators, including Carl
Sassenrath, on the underside of the lid.

AmigaOS is slated to be upgraded in Spring 1998
to v3.5.

My apologies to the Amiga community for not adding
these corrections sooner! I would love to list everyone
that sent in corrections, but there were literally
dozens.